The gospel on celebrity and pop culture

PREACH IT! Celine Dion's pregnancy will go on -- and on

This week Celine Dion's husband, Rene Angelil, put out what seems like an odd statement. Unless you live in Hollywood.

"There is nothing scheduled," Angelil said about the delivery of his soon-to-be-birthed twins with Dion. "We do not have a date."

Rumors had circulated that Dion had actually set the date of the birth for Oct. 22. But, per Angelil and Dion, mais non.

"They want Celine's pregnancy to go as long as possible, at least until the first week of November," Dion’s rep said in an additional statement. "She would never intentionally endanger her unborn children by scheduling a birth early like this."

That may sound like a big "duh," given that your average breeding American does not exactly plot births down to the day either.

But in Hollywood, people actually do. They schedule births all the time -- sometimes to coincide with shoot dates, promotion schedules and the like -- and usually because the birth also involves a C-section. (Every celebrity who's anybody has had a C-section, including Madonna and Angelina Jolie.)

Occasionally, however, all that feverish planning falls apart, even among the richest and most fabulous.

Take the case of Denise Richards. For the birth of one of her daughters, she booked her Cesarean delivery to coincide with the shooting hiatus of then-husband Charlie Sheen.

But the baby didn't get the memo -- and arrived a day early.

-- Leslie Gornstein

Photo: Celine with husband Rene Angelil in a still from the 2010 documentary "Celine: Through the Eyes of the World." Credit: Gerard Schachmes